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Another board games post
Last week, Game Fanatic’s board games all arrived on Monday and last night we finally finished trying all the new games out. I think all of us like all of the games in their own ways…Except that Lego Lover didn’t play one at all so it would be hard to know his opinion. Game Fanatic I played Summoner Wars, which is a two player card/board game. I was worried it would be too overwhelming but I found it was playable. Also, GF points out there is an iPad version so I could practice strategy there even though the free version only has one deck available. GF also realised he’d made a couple mistakes when explaining some of the rules. As it is, we’ve tried so many games this week I’ve just about forgotten that game now although I do remember that it was a lot easier to work out than Magic the Gathering was…(we spent a lot of money on MTG a couple years ago but haven’t played in over a year or more and none of us recall how to play…as we’ve invested so much money I’d like to get back to that and learn it properly again. ) GF also played the Scientist on Wednesday when I was out. He won both matches with ease, of course. :)
The second game was Kings of Tokyo and that was quite a lot of fun for all of us. The game was easy to learn and relatively quick to play. Well, it would be quick to play but Lego Lover takes a long time with most of his turns for some reason…even when he does understand what’s going on. Sometimes Lego Lover also plays rather recklessly and ends up losing when he might have won by playing more practically. Actually his recklessness is usually related to his desire to make sure his dad is hampered at every step of the way. I think that’s often more important to him than winning.
Last night we played Evo, which was created by the same guy who designed Smallworld. This was by far the most involved set up of the three games with GF referring frequently to the manual to figure out how many of each item was needed based on number of players. The actual game play wasn’t too hard but it does involve quite a bit of strategy. I randomly ended up being the first player at the start of the game which would usually be an advantage in most rounds. Later on I fell far behind and never managed to recover. It might be a bit better now I understand the basic play a bit more but I think getting behind like that pretty much locks one out of opportunities to recovery. I did get a card rather late in the game that would have helped a lot more but it was rendered fairly useless by the time I got and used it. All that said, if a player were more aggressive and willing to battle, I think it’s possible to do better than I did. Funnily, Lego Lover was determined to win a battle with me and had about five opportunities to get a dice roll in his favor and failed…He was less concerned about winning than beating me in that instance…And of course he was quite busy trying to prevent the Scientist from getting anywhere and wasted quite a lot of opportunity and points…otherwise I think he possibly could have won the game.
We still have more games to come but they probably won’t arrive for a while as they are mostly on backorder from an Australian company on the east coast.
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Games and more games
On the weekend we had a play with both Dominion and Castle Panic. The first was quite enjoyable and we can see lots of room for more interesting play as we try different decks and get used to playing a deck building game. The game is only supposed to take about thirty minutes but with us playing the first time plus the slowness with which Lego Lover took his turns, it was more like an hour and a half. Fortunately we started fairly early and had time for a game of Castle Panic afterwards. This was the big winner of the night…at least that seemed to be the consensus of the family. Game Fanatic and Lego Lover overwhelmingly preferred this to Dominion (even though they liked Dominion). The nice things about the game are short set up times and the fact the game goes really quickly. We came nowhere close to winning the game we played but we did have a lot of fun playing it.
Just after that, we watched the Tabletop show for Pandemic which is available on You Tube and looked to be really fun too. I have heard this one is another popular co-op game which is similar to Forbidden Island but a bit more complex. Game Fanatic and I had an appointment in Perth so we went into the city proper to Tactics, a board game and hobby shop that carries a wide selection. On the day it was particularly muggy and this place is downstairs from a shopping arcade…it was miserably hot with no air moving in any direction. But there was a copy of Pandemic there and it wasn’t quite as overpriced as most of the other games there. I didn’t buy it, knowing it was likely to be cheaper elsewhere but it was tempting. One day that will surely be added to our family collection.
This morning the postal van delivered more packages for Game Fanatic. This included the games Evo, Summoner Wars and King of Tokyo. I don’t know much about any of the games except they all can be played with just two players. Game Fanatic had hoped to play one this evening but we had a video to watch and we also got pizza from the shop for dinner…in addition to going to the gym today, there just wasn’t time to play.
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Change of plan
I arrived for my blood donation this afternoon and filled out the paperwork required. When I turned it in, the reception person asked if I’d be interested in doing a plasma donation instead. I guess the local supplies are quite low at the moment. For some reason she didn’t have any information about my having donated plasma before. It didn’t require too much change of plan aside from the fact it took a lot longer than a simple blood draw requires. The first two times they only took something like 700 ml of plasma but this time it was increased to something like 825. The previous times, there were three sessions of the blood being drawn and separated but this time it became four. And the last session’s draw was quite short but it seemed to take much longer than the other ones. The place was fairly busy when I arrived but I was the only one there when I finished. I guess it was a slow afternoon. I won’t give a full blood donation until July but did book in to do plasma in another month.
I still haven’t been able to re-enrol for my tai chi class online because the class I want is still showing as sold out. It seems unlikely this is really the case so I contacted the owner again tonight for the second time to clarify that there is still space in the class. I find it hard to imagine otherwise but there could be people joining with discount vouchers, I suppose. I have suggested to her that I book in with a different class instead and sort out the day later on.
We didn’t end up trying the new board games this evening after all. By the time all the coming and going was over and food was eaten, it was getting late. Looks like it may have to wait for the weekend as I will be out tomorrow and we have some dvds to watch from a video service we are trialling (for the second time now!). Â As we weren’t going to play games, I decided to retry the iPad version of Caylus and see if I could get an understanding of the game play. I got through two games and finally feel I have some idea of what I am doing. I still need to work out some of the finer points but at least I feel I am in the game now. :) Â I have a few other games on the iPad that I am trying to learn too, along with others that are the same as games we already play (Carcassone, Settlers of Cataan, Ticket to Ride, etc).
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New games
I received my two new board games in the mail this morning. Apparently the post van person just knocked on the door and left them on the doorstep. Game Fanatic was on top of them as soon as I opened them and has a bit of an idea of how they work already. I suspect at least one might get a bit of a play tomorrow once we are settled at home for the evening.
Meanwhile, Game Fanatic has ordered four more games from a company here in Australia, one for each member of the family. I think these were all games unavailable at Ozgameshop (or cheaper in Australia). The shipping for all of them only comes out to $7.50, which is pretty cheap for four board games. He gave me a choice of three co-op games that he thought might interest me and I chose Ghost Stories. I don’t recall the other ones but they all seem to be quite different. All are on backorder so it’s hard to tell when they will get sent out.
A few years ago I bought a copy of the Lord of the Rings board game from 2001 from a secondhand shop for about $3. When I checked the pieces, I thought the ring was missing but Game Fanatic pulled it out on Sunday and discovered no pieces were missing. I’m not sure why I didn’t see the ring before as it’s quite visible. I was beginning to think we wouldn’t ever play the game but we did play it Sunday evening, without participation from Lego Lover who refused to play. But we did have a bit of a mishap before we got around to playing the game. Game Fanatic had set out all the pieces on our coffee table during the afternoon and left it there until we played. Our little girl dog, Fluttershy, got hold of a couple of the character pieces and had a bit of a chew on them. One probably can be glued back together but the other appears to have a piece totally missing. We can still glue some of it back, I guess, but GF is really upset about it. This is a game that was in excellent condition when we got it. She also chewed on a couple of wooden place markers but other than the teeth marks they are fine. The game itself went quite well though. It’s another co-op game and requires the use of two two-sided boards, covering four locations. It’s one of those games which really required us to play before we worked out the proper rules so we had some mistakes along the way. Still, we nearly won the game, getting beaten at the very end. It requires a fair bit of sacrifice by players which I think will be interesting as we play it in the future.
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Only taken a couple years…
After playing Ticket to Ride on my birthday, Game Fanatic suddenly got back into playing board games after backing away from them for the most part. He pulled out Alhambra, a game we had yet to try, and worked out the rules. His first observation was that it wasn’t terribly complex. He also pointed out that it has a slightly Carcasonne-ish element to it although it’s considerably different. We tried out the game tonight and it all went well…except that Lego Lover was very slow to take his turns and it took a lot longer than we expected. It was a lot of fun and easy to set up so I suspect this will be something we play more often than the more complex games we own. I recently noticed there are expansions for this game so we might invest in some of those at some point.
We often purchase video games from Ozgameshop, a UK retailer that sells at a much lower price and offers free shipping. More recently they added toys and board games to the items they sell and the prices are again much lower than any local retailers. They sent me a birthday email with a $10 discount on my next purchase so I used it this week to buy a couple more board games and hope to get those in the next couple of weeks. I’m finally getting a copy of Dominion, which I’ve heard good reviews about from a variety of sources. The other games is Castle Panic, which I saw on the web video show, Tabletop (hosted by Wil Wheaton). Game Lover and I watched and liked what we saw. It’s a co-op game. in a similar vein to Forbidden Island, which our whole family enjoys playing. And because he’s in one of those moods, Game Fanatic has bought three more games for himself this weekend….
Tomorrow is supposed to be International Tabletop Day and our family is going to have our own game-playing party. We plan to play Alhambra again and will likely play at least one other game. We will have to fit that in between egg decorating and other weekend activities. I also got an email from a local friend inviting us to play board games on Sunday. It only came tonight so not sure if we will go or not… it’s a good chance for social outings for Game Fanatic so perhaps we can work something out.
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Wish lists and Forbidden Island
It has been customary in the last several years for Game Fanatic to make wish lists for both his birthday and Christmas that include photos, prices and retailer options to aid us in buying gifts that won’t disappoint and won’t take him too much by surprise. He’s not very big on surprises. Anyway, he made a list for his birthday in September but it was considerably shorter than in past years. There was a game he wanted that wasn’t due to be released until the week following his birthday so he planned to put aside birthday money towards that purchase. Unfortunately the game date was pushed back and was only released early last month. He finally got his very much desired game. After that game, he didn’t think there was much that interested him so he decided to let go of the “list’ and allow us to choose things for him. He did eventually point out some things that interested him in the video/music/game shop near us but no list was made. And by the time he finally made known what interested him, the Scientist and I had already made a few purchases.
One of the gifts we chose was the game Forbidden Island that we found in one of the game shops we visited while Christmas shopping. I remember seeing this on Board Game Geek at some point before it was released and it sounded like it might be a good game for us to eventually try. And since it sported a Mensa Select sticker, we thought it might be a good game for Game Fanatic, who is quite good at some of the thinking games. So Christmas Day came and it became apparent early on that being taken by surprise was not a good idea and Game Fanatic was kind of disappointed with his gifts. We did half expect this and offered to return gifts for refunds so he could choose what he wanted. Forbidden Island was one that looked as thought it was going back at this point. Surprisingly, Game Fanatic decided a while later that he would give the game a chance after all. I think the problem was that it took him by surprise.
The nice thing about Forbidden Island is that it doesn’t require a long playing time like so many of the other games we own. So this was the reason we gave this one a try last night when it was already getting kind of late. After the exhausting hours spent on Agricola the night before, this was an absolute delight. Set up is quite easy and it took only a few minutes to work out the game play. Game Fanatic took to this one from the start and it really suits his thinking style, so much that he was working out strategy throughout the game. This is one of only a few cooperative games we own so it was a nice change to be playing together. We ended up with an unlucky draw of the cards at the start that made it pretty difficult to win but we gave it a good shot anyway. While we didn’t win,  we all had fun the whole way through and weren’t utterly exhausted at the end like the night before. I’m sure we’ll be giving this game a lot of use in the future since it’s a simple and quick game that is a lot of fun to play.
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Agricola
When I was in the US back in June, I went on a bit of a buying frenzy for board games. Here in Australia, most are significantly more expensive and infrequently go on sale. I was particularly interested in getting Agricola because it’s one of the higher-priced board games being sold right now. I ended up doing a lot of running around to get this, reserving a copy at a Dallas games shop when it wasn’t in stock . It was quite annoying to later discover that Barnes and Noble had plenty of copies in stock all along. I didn’t find my way to B&N until the latter part of my visit and it never occurred to me they would be carrying board games even though I had been to Border’s which did carry some titles.
When I returned home, I was literally sick and tired for several weeks and we only ended up learning to play a couple of the games during that time. Further down the track, we did make some attempts at learning some of the others but the learning part would take so long we’d abandon play before we properly got into them. I spent a lot of time reading the manual for Agricola during this time but we never had the time to learn to play. Last night, I suggested we finally give it a shot and that’s when the fun started.
Although I had read the rules a number of times, it’s often quite difficult to work out the play until you actually do it. We started to set it up and realised our coffee table simply wasn’t big enough to accomodate all the boards and pieces, so moved to the kitchen table. Set up was more difficult than we expected due to some pieces not quite matching the illustrations/instructions. Game play was also quite difficult to work out. It is recommended that newcomers play the family version to start, moving on to the full game once basic game play is understood. Unfortunately, the instructions are mostly geared to the full game, with only a few notes posted on the family version of the games. After much frustration, I looked online and discovered a video explanation lasting a half-hour. The Scientist and I watched while the boys disappeared for a while. Afterwards, the Scientist had a good idea of what we needed to do and I was halfway there. So we finally started and muddled through the various rounds of the game. Game Fanatic was thoroughly overwhelmed and pretty much just went through the motions for the latter part of the game. By that point, he had managed to acrue enough negative points to leave him well out of any chance of winning so he had just given up. Lego Lover enjoyed playing even though he also ended with negative points due to difficulties in managing the multiple facets of the game. I just managed to keep to positive points and the Scientist did somewhat better than me.  It was quite late by the time we finished and we were pretty exhausted after having our mental faculties so heavily taxed.  I think we will enjoy this a lot more the next time we play.
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Games revisited
One of the priorities on our holiday was to stock up on board games because they are so very expensive here. I ended up doing quite a bit of running around to find many of them and later found some at local stores (to where I was staying). Â Below is a list of games that filled our luggage on the homeward journey.
- Agricola-This was my top priority because it’s so expensive. I kind of wished I had ordered it by mail order because it was fairly expensive to buy in store. Also I had to make two trips to Dallas for this one because it wasn’t in stock the first time…and I later found it locally. Even though we’ve been home two and a half months, we still haven’t played this one. I’m sure it will be fine once we get going but because it’s supposed to be long and the instructions are rather complicated, we have put it off so far.
- San Juan- this is the card game version of Puerto Rico. It was fine but we didn’t like it nearly as well as Puerto Rico so have only played it once so far.
- Ticket to Ride Europe- This was another priority game and I found this the first time I ventured off to the board game shop in Dallas. So far we really like this one and have played at least four times. The really nice part of this game is that Lego Lover is able to play somewhat competitively and really enjoys it.
- Apples to Apples- I found this game just about everywhere I went and got it very cheaply in some place like Target. This is a very popular game for the family and it doesn’t take very long to play. This is one that is more likely to be chosen when it’s late and we don’t want to start a long game. Lego Lover may not have the knowledge of some of the pop cultural references but he’s been able to win this one at least once.
- Travel Blokus-I found this at Target and got it because it was ideal for our plane travel. We only played it once in-flight but it worked really well.
- Spongebob Monopoly-This was a had-to-have for Lego Lover, who also loves Spongebob. I played this with him while we were there and the family played again this weekend and it was a fun variation on the Monopoly game.
- Thurns and Taxis- I didn’t know much about this game but found it by chance in a hobby shop that also sold board games. I found the shop thanks to a coupon (20% off) and an article in a local advertising catalogue. We tried to play this once but it became obvious early on that it was another complicated and long game.
- Killer Bunnies Remix- I found this heavily reduced at Barnes and Noble just before we came home and debated about getting it. It’s a sampler of various versions of the game designed to be an introduction. The name sounds a bit violent but I’d heard this was a very funny card game. I bought it and we have kind of played it once and didn’t quite get the right idea about it. I’m sure it will be better with further study of the instructions but we haven’t revisited it yet.
- Eco Fluxx-I think we mostly just have the regular version of this available here but I found there were at least three or four variations in Texas. Lego Lover and I played a few times while travelling and enjoyed this but we haven’t tried it out as a family yet.
I’m not too worried that we haven’t played all these games yet. It’s a bit of a stretch to think we could learn them all and be playing competently when there are so many of them.
Another reason that I bought so many games overseas was the lack of access to them in local shops. We’d been purchasing games by mail order from the east coast because it was cheaper and included free shipping when we spent enough money. So lo and behold, we discovered a new shop called Mighty Dice getting ready to open in a brand new shopping center near us. It’s not that there aren’t games shops around. There is one independent store in Perth that is okay but they were unreliable the one time I tried to order something that was out of stock. Also, it’s a hassle going into the city just to visit one shop. There used to be quite a few stores from two different chains that sold games but they have been gradually disappearing over the past few years and one just closed in one of the local malls. That one was more expensive than anyone else so we never bought anything there so it wasn’t really a big loss.
Mighty Dice opened early in August and we’ve dropped in quite regularly as it’s where we now do most of our food and grocery shopping. The shop sells Warhammer, board and card games and some trading card games. We’ve already got started playing Magic the Gathering, thanks to an interest by Game Fanatic. I only just tried playing this past week and have a slight grasp of what I’m doing. We’ve also bought a couple more games -Alhambra, which we haven’t played yet and Munchkin, a card game which we have played and liked. The shop includes tables so that people can compete in Warhammer and other games while in store. I’ve noticed groups playing Magic the Gathering about half the times we visit, usually in late afternoon. It would seem a nice little community of game players is forming just down the road from us.
And as if these games were not enough, Pokemon the trading card game has been one more addition to the family games library. Lego Lover wasn’t interested in Magic TG and is still a bit young for it. Pokemon has become the alternative and plays similarly to Magic (but is easier).
I guess it would seem we are rather overwhelmed with the task of learning new games and I don’t think we’ll be adding anything new to our library of games for quite a while.
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Games, games and more games, part 2
A few months ago I wrote about our family’s recent interest in board games. I had intended to write another post a short time later but that somehow never happened.
The family was so enamored of the new games that I ordered more games from the supplier on the east coast. They’d had a sale on for all of January and I think I ordered a second time right at the end of the month. New games this time around were Puerto Rico, Blokus Duo and the card game Fluxx. It was a bit like Christmas again when the package arrived quite promptly within a couple of days of ordering. Not only were the prices cheaper than anything local but they offered free one day shipping.
I think Puerto Rico is one of my favorite games now. It seemed incredibly complicated when we first started but once we got going, we all enjoyed it. And once you know the basic play, it sort of falls into place. We’ve played this quite a few times since we got it and it never fails to be a couple hours of fun for us. I somehow managed to win my first game against Lego Lover and the Scientist when we played this weekend. Lego Lover was doing quite well so it was something of a surprise when he was a couple points under me at the end.
Blokus Duo is just a two player version of Blokus. It’s a smaller board and players don’t start from the corner as in the original game. It’s far more competitive for two players. This works really well when we aren’t playing as a family. Unfortunately we are kind of stuck when we have three players, as has happened recently. The original game board is a bit too easy with three players. When we played over the weekend, we all finished equally in one game. In the other one, the only difference between winner and loser was the fact one had played the single tile last. It would be good if there was a travel version available here because it would be a good game to place with Lego Lover on the plane. It has been released on the iPhone/iPod Touch but it takes up 95mb and I don’t want to use up so much space on my iPod.
I bought the card game, Fluxx, on a whim when I placed the last order. The game is incredibly easy to play because there is a very simple basic rule to start and the cards provide new rules as you go. The new rules can get pretty silly and strange at times but it’s definitely never dull.
More recently, I found a Lord of the Rings board game at a Salvos (Salvation army) secondhand shop for just eight dollars. It normally would sell for over $70 new. It is missing one piece, but it’s just a marker and is no loss to game play. We haven’t played this one so I can’t say anything about it just yet.
The next games on my to-buy list are Agricola and Ticket to Ride.
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Games, games and more games, part one
As mentioned in the Australia Day post, we have some new board games at our house. Games Paradise, a retailer from the eastern states, had sale on during January for 15% off everything until stocks ran out. I ordered two games earlier this month: Blokus and Smallworld. The latter is a game wanted by Game Fanatic for quite a while now. He’d found out about it in some roundabout way through his favorite website, TV Tropes, and was obsessed with getting it. He also had various other games or dvds he wanted and still hadn’t gotten a copy by Christmas. Blokus was an extra to push up the total enough to get free shipping.
Blokus
Blokus has turned out to be incredibly easy to learn and lots of fun to play. For my part, it is also a game I seem to be be reasonably good at playing, so there’s a decent chance I will win the round. The game consists of four sets of playing pieces, in different colors. Each set is comprised of all differently shaped pieces. There is a square, tiled board where the pieces are placed so that same colors only touch at corners. The goal of the game is to to play the most number of pieces of all the players. We’ve played quite a few rounds and the lowest score so far has been 2 pieces left. The nice thing about this game is its playing time is short enough (about fifteen minutes) that it’s not necessary to block off several hours of an evening to play. The only drawback is that you really need four players for a decent game. It just doesn’t work very well with anything less.
Smallworld
We’ve only played Smallworld a few times so we are still learning the ins and outs of the game. There are a lot of pieces in the game, but not all of them are used for each game. It looked really overwhelming when we first started and it takes a bit of time to set it up. The game is a sort of world domination sort of game…a bit along the lines of Risk but seemingly less complicated from what I can tell. There are a number of different races(dwarves, elves, humans, etc.) that each player eventually will choose from. The races are paired with a power (e.g., berserker, heroic, etc.). These are paired in a random order before the start of the game. The first player must choose a pair to start the game and this influences how many playing pieces are received by the player to use on the board. I will also point out that different boards are used, depending on the number of players. It gets bigger, the more players involved. The first player must place all the units on the board strategically before the next player starts. There are ten rounds (I think) in the game. The first one is essentially a setting up phase. During subsequent rounds, the object is to conquer as much of the territory as possible, based on the game rules. At some point, a particular player may lack the ability to do much more so has the option of going into decline. This leaves certain pieces on the board for the original combination to claim territory and allows the player to start again with a different race/power combination the following round. A player can go into decline as often as they like within the ten rounds of the game. Points are scored each round, based on how many territories are controlled by the player.
The first game went kind of slowly so that we ended up reducing the number of rounds so that we could finish before it got too late. Everyone was enthusiastic at the beginning but Lego Lover lost some interest after awhile and wasn’t active in the latter part of the game. On Australia Day, he’d been ready to give it another go but the game had to put away due to delays in getting started. The game claims its age range is 8+ but I think it’s a bit complex for younger kids to play with any chance of being competitive with older players. I might have judged it more appropriate for a ten year old.
We’re enjoying playing the board games so much, I ordered more games last week and they arrived Friday afternoon. I will write more about those in another post. I think one of our next games will probably be Ticket to Ride. We played this once at a friend’s house a few years ago and really enjoyed it at the time. Game Fanatic is also keen to get a player expansion for Settlers of Catan so he can play with his Dungeon’s and dragons group. There’s been discussion about mixing it up a bit and having regular board game days instead of the usual D&D, so he’s keen to share some of the games.